


an acre before us

by perfectpro



Series: Overlapping Orbits [2]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:13:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29008101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: When she comes to find him, it will be her choice. He will not accept anything else. He made his intentions clear years ago, and now the decision is hers to make.Klaus, Caroline, and overlapping orbits.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Overlapping Orbits [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131002
Comments: 16
Kudos: 124





	an acre before us

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sufjan Steven's Death with Dignity.

When Klaus leaves Mystic Falls, he doesn’t let her go.

Caroline is so young. In spite of how his face has stayed the same, he can hardly understand that type of youth, that type of possibility. Her experiences are so limited to her high school friends, her small town, the mundanity of day-to-day life. How can he begrudge her the opportunity to break free and explore for herself? 

A girl as young as she is deserves to know herself. If she had gone with him, he doesn’t think she ever truly would. They would have grown to know each other, yes, but Klaus knows himself. He knows the depth of his soul and the horrors that he will rage in the name of own desires.

He has lived a thousand years. If Caroline wants to take a century or two for herself, that is no time at all. 

So, he doesn’t let her go. Getting off of that forest floor, dirt on his knees and leaves in her hair, he offers her his hand. It is the least of the things he has offered her, and yet he is offering himself with it. She pulls herself up by the trunk of a dogwood tree instead.

-x-

In the years before she comes to find him, he stumbles upon her a few times. Not on purpose, just happenstances that put them in the same place at the same time. The world is so much smaller than it used to be. Or it has always been exactly this small, and he has just run out of places to explore.

The first time it happens, she’s sitting outside a café in Giza. Her hair is wrapped in a silk scarf the color of a perfectly ripe mango, and she drinks a coffee in spite of the sweltering heat that bears down from the cloudless sky. Fifteen years have passed since that day in the forest, and she wears each of them with the air of a woman who is satisfied with her lot in life. 

She’s on the phone with someone, and yet she talks with her hands all the same. He isn’t close enough to make out what she’s saying, but he imagines that this is her first trip here, that she has come to explore the world, to see the pyramids.

He only watches her a few moments before tearing his eyes away and disappearing back into the crowd. Enough to tell himself that she’s happy.

Klaus has never sought her out, though there have been many times where he has longed for her company. Tracking her down would be easy enough if he truly needed to. Everyone has creature comforts, and he thinks he knows Caroline well enough to be familiar with hers.

Rebekah mentions seeing her in Paris for fashion week, sitting across from her on the runway. “She was less bitchy than I remember, if you can believe it,” she tells him, and the photos she sends show her and Caroline holding matching glasses of champagne, easy smiles worn on their lips.

“Perhaps you’re less bitchy this go round,” Klaus returns, unsurprised when she ends the call without bothering to respond.

Another chance encounter is at Giverny, where he’s come to visit Monet’s gardens. The impressionists are among his favorites, and he admires the blending of colors, the blurry appeal, the attempt to capture the sense of a moment rather than the reality. 

She’s sitting on a bench, wearing a red beret and looking for all the world like it’s exactly where she belongs. She’d looked that way in Giza as well, he remembers, and he expects she fits in wherever she pleases. A chameleon blending in with her surroundings, forever attempting to ignore the fact that she will always stand out. 

For a moment, he’s tempted to go over to her. She isn’t accompanied by anyone, not distracted on her phone, simply staring at the water lilies that feature in so many of the master’s paintings. 

Instead, he gazes at her, trying to absorb his fill, unable to know how many years will separate this from the next time he sees her. 

The act reminds him of _The Robber Bride_ , the sensation of women always being watched. He’d never dream of doing such a thing to her, but isn’t he making her complicit in this way? A voyeur who dreams of seeing her unburdened by expectations, who revels in how unconscious she is of the act.

Unbidden shame burns through him, and he moves away before he’s fully aware of it, dipping through the surrounding tourists until he’s out of her sightline. The moment has slipped through his fingers, another chance with her that’s come and gone with nothing to show for it. Nothing except for the knowledge that she’s safe, that she’s getting to know herself and the world around her in turn.

-x-

Elijah tells him over dinner in Florence, “I saw Ms. Forbes earlier today.” He brings the topic up with a forced air of casualness, and anyone else might assume that could just be because it’s always how Elijah sounds. It’s the narrowed eyes that give his intentions anyway.

Spearing a scallop and dipping it into the wine sauce thickened with blood, Klaus gives a nod, a motion to continue.

His brother purses his lips before going on, “We ran into each other at the airport. She was heading to Germany in search of an artifact the Bennet witch asked her for. Did you know that she was here?”

The unasked question lingers between them. _Has she been here, with you?_

In truth, Klaus had no idea that she was this close. He doubts that she knew she was either. In America, whispers followed him whenever he went. In Europe, where the supernatural world is less connected, word does not spread as fast unless there is good reason, especially when he travels alone, unaccompanied by his siblings. He appreciates the scant anonymity that it affords him. 

“I had no idea,” Klaus says truthfully. He pictures Caroline in Germany with a beer in her hand as she walks through the Christmas markets, or closing her eyes in pleasure at her first taste of a black forest cake. He thinks of her hair whipping in the wind as she drives on the autobahn. 

It isn’t clear whether Elijah believes him. He always holds his cards so close to the chest, and yet his true intentions are always obvious. He wants to fix their fractured family, to bring them together for longer than just a simple vacation. Klaus is the sibling who prevents it, who sets the rest of them on the edge, and it is so clear that Elijah sees Caroline as the potential key to tempering his moods.

“I gathered as much. We had lunch together; she’s doing well.” He says it as though it’s an offhand comment, as though it doesn’t make Klaus burn.

The idea of seeing Caroline by chance and asking her to lunch is unthinkable to him. Elijah and Rebekah might be able to see her in a casual setting, for lunch or at the afterparty of a runway show, but Klaus could not bear the idea of asking her such a simple thing out of fear of rejection.

He doesn’t know how much longer he will have to wait, but the idea of pressing her hand too early only to lose it all is unbearable.

When she comes to find him, it will be her choice, and when she stays that will be her choice as well. He will not accept anything else, and she must know what it means to him. All those years of never being anyone’s first choice, he saw how important it was to her. He made his intentions clear years ago, and now the decision is hers to make.

-x-

The decades pass in bursts of action interspersed with years spent in his studios. The few that he thinks are worthwhile are hung in museums under pseudonyms, and the ones that aren’t are sold at the auctions Rebekah loves to attend out of a love for buying widower’s jewels.

There are plots that he crushes, covens that he dismantles, and communities he smothers beneath his heel. Of course. Such is the way of the world, the pattern that he has fallen victim to.

Not, not fallen victim to. He is the maker of his own course.

One of the more dramatic plots is that of a plot to end the sire lines, a young witch turned vampire so disgusted by her fate that she seeks to end all those who share in it by bringing down the Original family. They nearly get to Rebekah, who allowed herself to act as bait to their plot. It sends them scattering for years, to safe houses hidden in the corners of the globe, and by the time it ends on an island off the coast of Chile in bloodshed and broken bodies, whispers of the young man’s demise spread further than even he would have expected.

He returns to his house in Florence to find a blond vampire laying across the steps, neck tilted at a precarious angle that sends him into a panic before he’s conscious of it, ripping into his wrist even though he has no idea if this is something his blood will fix.

Caroline’s eyes flutter open at the scent of fresh blood, veins pulses briefly before retreating, leaving her looking utterly human and harmless. She props herself up on her elbows, a smile dancing in the corners of her mouth as she takes in the sight of him.

Nearly two centuries have passed, and he has not simply sat idly by. He hopes that she had not expected such a thing. 

“I was waiting for you,” she tells him, as though she is the one who has been waiting.

It’s been nearly three years since he last saw her burying her face into a bouquet of tulips in Amsterdam. They were so pink as to match her lipstick, and he could never match the color to that on his pallet no matter how long he spent working at it. She wouldn’t stay in this position even if he asked, so he tries to commit it to memory to put on canvas later. 

There are so many things to say, but he believes there will be enough time to say everything later. “Hello, love,” he greets her in turn.

-x-

“How did you know I would come here?” he asks that night, when it no longer feels so frantic, when he can truly appreciate the fact that she is here.

They’re in his bed, only a sheet covering their bodies. He’d offered her a blanket, but she’d rejected it with a shake of her head. The air is warm but not heavy or confining. Every so often, a breeze finds its way through the open windows, and Caroline twists to catch as much on her skin as she can.

“I thought it’s where I would come, if I wanted to be alone.” She rests her chin in her hand, watching him in a way that feels both familiar and foreign all at once.

There is so much for them to learn about each other, to relearn. These two centuries have shaped her, have made her into a woman who is only the same as the young vampire he met in Mystic Falls in looks. He wonders if she feels the same way about him, if there are shadows in his eyes she doesn’t recognize.

Her words sink in. “You knew about this place,” he whispers, trying to remember his stay in Florence all those years ago.

Had there been a girl watching him in the market, blonde hair pulled back, dressing in the linens of the locals? Elijah said he’d run into her at the airport, and it had sounded like a chance meeting, one of those things that was bound to happen when you lived as long as they did.

Pressing her lips into a smirk even she tries to keep it down, she says, “I’ve forgotten how arrogant you can be. You thought you were only one who kept track.”

All the years between them that he looks at through fresh eyes. The fashion shows with Rebekah, lunches with Elijah. She’s even helped Kol out a time or two, something his brother has mentioned with relish in the past, knowing how Klaus’s jealousy burned at the thought. He’d thought her orbit just brushed near his, as things tended to happen when the world and its supernatural community were as small as they were. 

She watches him through heavily lidded eyes as he makes the connection. She’d come back into his orbit on purpose rather than through happenstance. The realization pleases him, and he reaches out for her, her body an invitation that curves up to meet him.

-x-

That night, they sit out on his balcony under the stars, drinking wine and eating the selection of cheese that Caroline picked up at the market that morning. She has the pallet for this sort of thing now, looking at the vintage that he chose with an assessing eye.

The years that he was hunted slip off of him like a cheaply made garment, and he takes pleasure in the wine on his tongue and the sound of her laughter. There is such a quiet beauty to her in these unassuming moments, how she wanders through the villa with curiosity. She had known he was here and had kept her distance, waiting to explore with him by her side. 

“I tried to find you a year ago,” she admits. “All I found were dead ends.”

He was in hiding, trying to determine how to end that witch, trying to re-establish the empire that he has built for himself time and time again. Elijah or Rebekah might have told her about his safehouse in Greenland, but then again they too were keeping their location closely under wraps. As disappointed as he is that she hadn’t been able to come to him sooner, it is good to know that even someone who knows him so well was unable to track their movements. 

“We had a little witch problem.” An understatement, but he doesn’t want to delve into the intricacies of the situation. They have time enough to go through it later.

Tipping her wine glass back to catch the last few drops, she sets it down and rests her head on his thigh. “It sounded to me like you had a much bigger witch problem. I hear Chile is beautiful this time of year.”

Their eyes meet, and Caroline doesn’t shy away from his gaze. He wonders what she has to say of the destruction and havoc he had left in his wake. There is so much ruin in his past, and surely much to come in his future as well. 

“Elijah said that I acted a tad harshly,” Klaus suggests.

She purses her lips. “I was in Greece when I heard, with the other half of the coven.”

Kol was meant to tackle the Grecian portion of the clan, but he arrived to their hiding spot to find only corpses left behind. He’d pouted about it while Klaus waited on his layover in Spain. 

There is much he doesn’t know about her. He brushes his thumb over her bottom lip, red from both the wine and their earlier activities. The girl he had known before would have never gone to such lengths. He considers it, remembers the witch massacre she had caused to save the Bennet witch. So she would have then, but perhaps not for him. The idea makes him lighter, knowing that he is among the few she would do such things for.

-x-

Klaus wakes in an empty bed to late morning sun through the open windows and the scent of blood fresh in the air. The sight in the kitchen that greets him is one that he would have thought impossible only a day before. Caroline stands at the island, splitting a blood bag between two juice glasses.

Wearing his robe with her hair gathered into a bun on top of her head, she looks how she must have looked for all the mornings they’ve been apart. He feels almost voyeuristic, watching her in a moment that he doesn’t know he was meant to observe.

“Breakfast is ready,” she announces, turning to him with a smile that freezes when she sees how he hasn’t bothered to get dressed.

“Embarrassed in the light of day?” he teases her, accepting the glass that she offers and licking her thumb from where she’d wiped the last of it from the bag.

She swallows, and he grins to know that it isn’t embarrassment that plagues her but rather arousal.

“I go out and fetch breakfast for us, and you want to just take me back to bed?” she splutters after a moment, even though he hadn’t said anything of the sort.

-x-

They do go back to bed, as well as finish the breakfast she had so thoughtfully procured from a blood drive held at a local church. The taste of the blood on his tongue followed by her is so decadent that he’s tempted to make a meal of her, and perhaps she would let him. That can come later, though. For now, he’s content to watch her as she looks onto the Italian hills.

“When you told me that I’d find you one day, I didn’t think I would. I thought I would never want to see you again. And yet here I am,” she says at last, keeping her eyes trained forward.

He’d expected as much. She was so young then, and she knew so little of the world. The idea of all that he’s done must have been a bitter pill to swallow. “It only took you two hundred years,” he tells her, pressing his nose to her hair, breathing in the scent of her, still so new.

Her mouth lifts briefly, willing to be amused for a moment. “Have you missed me?” she asks, and there is such vulnerability trapped in the words.

To answer, he pulls her hand in his, leading her through the villa. She follows him without question, passing through hallways until they’ve arrived at his studio.

“I didn’t think I would show you these so soon,” he admits, tugging a sheet off the paintings he’d left covered the last time he’d been here. Beneath the sheet are canvases that speak of their time apart, and he shifts them to where she can see his true meaning.

A lipstick pink tulip, carried by her delicate hand, nails painted a soft cornflower blue. An abstract of a café near the pyramids, a woman’s hair hidden in a scarf the color of a perfectly ripe mango. A bastardized Monet, impressionistic strokes that reveal a woman facing a pond of water lilies, a red beret perched on her blond head. 

There are others as well. He’s done the photo that Rebekah sent him of them at the afterpart, as well as a depiction of the restaurant she last shared lunch with Elijah. His world has changed in the years he’s been away from her, but she should never question whether he felt her absence.

Caroline gasps at the revelation, and she touches the art gingerly, her fingers tracing her likeness in each one. “You saw me,” she whispers at last before pressing her lips to his.

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, he corrects her, “I’ve always seen you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the quote Klaus is thinking of from Margaret Atwood's _The Robber Bride_ :
> 
> "Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur."


End file.
